


Over The Years

by Blue_Night



Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Canon Related, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Feelings, Gift of Life, M/M, Wraith, Wraith Feeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 05:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3839002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Night/pseuds/Blue_Night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a contemplation about Todd's and John Sheppard's relationship from the moment they met in the Genii's captivity to the possible future after Atlantis' return to Pegasus, told from Todd's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over The Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dragonflower1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonflower1/gifts).



> Dear dragonflower1, I wish you all the best for your birthday and especially for your appointment today. I will cross my fingers for you that you will have a wonderful day and get good news!  
> This is the second year I have the honor to gift a little story about our two favorite guys to you at your birthday and I do hope that you will enjoy it and that it can distract you from real life a little bit.  
> We once talked about the way John looks at Todd in our comments which inspired me to this reflexion and the story poked me for two days, so I simply had to write it down. It could belong in my Pegasus Alliance as much as in your Planetfall, I guess and so I decided to let it be a stand-alone. I tried to catch up Todd's thoughts and his feelings and I hope that I wrote it in a way you can agree to it.  
> You will also get a new chapter of 'Way Of Life', but it might take until tonight or tomorrow until I can post it.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy it and please, let me know if you liked it! :-)

The first thing the Wraith noticed about the unknown human when they met were his beautiful eyes.

The first time they met, both of them had been prisoners of the Genii Acastus Kolya. From the moment the Wraith looked in the unknown human's astonishing hazel-green eyes, the ancient creature knew that their fates would be tied together inseparable for the rest of their lives.

The human soldier sat on a stool, his arms tied behind the seat back, his mouth gagged with a dirty scrap of scratchy material and his expressive hazel-green eyes looked up at him in a mixture of defiance, hate, mistrust, pain and the unquestioning determination to survive.

The Wraith was weak and aching all over from ten years of agonizing starvation, and he actually shouldn't have cared about this unknown human soldier who had been that dense to let himself be captured, at all, but when he started to feed on him, the hazel-green eyes grimly held his own gaze. Their expression never changed during the whole feeding, even when the human started to cry and shake from the burning pain of the draining, his groans and screams muffled by the dirty gag.

The Wraith knew immediately that this remarkable human was truly special, not only because of his fearless behavior, but also because he had never tasted such delicious strength before, not one single time in his long life of more than ten thousand years.

The human tasted so sweet and strong and his life-force filled every cell of his own weak and starved body with new hope and the will to survive himself. He longed to take all of it, to drown in the human and drain him until he had absorbed every little ounce of precious life the human had to offer, but to his own surprise, he hesitated to kill this special and remarkable human just for a moment's pleasure that would fade again far too soon and leave him lonely and aching for more.

Instead, he decided to let himself be infected by the human's trust in his friends and his will to live and he escaped with him after more than ten years of captivity, laying his own life in the human's calloused hands. Of course, they still mistrusted and hated each other, but to the Wraith's surprise, the human with the name John Sheppard kept the promise he had given him that they both would leave this planet alive and healthy.

When they did, the Wraith had fed on six other humans, soldiers like Sheppard himself, but even though he felt sated and strong for the first time in ten years, the strength of these six humans didn't satisfy him like the small amount life-force he had taken from the hazel-eyed colonel had satisfied him. His body hummed with fresh power and regained strength, but the humans had tasted weak and almost like ash.

After feeding on them, it had been a surprisingly easy decision to give Sheppard back what he had taken from him, even a little bit more and his only concern back then had been whether the weak and unworthy lives of the Genii would poison the precious and oh so delicious strength of this unique human man or not.

When Sheppard left him on that other planet he had brought him to, the Wraith caught a glimpse of the human's true nature for the first time, as the hate and mistrust vanished for one second and Sheppard favored him with this crooked grin and the shrug of his shoulders that turned him into the happy and carefree little boy he once perhaps might have been. This somewhat mischievous smile that made his eyes sparkle and that charmed every other being instantly, no matter if this being was human, Wraith or any other creature; and the Wraith found himself caught off guard by it, longing to get to know this human better and see this special smile again.

**

The next time they met, Sheppard actually did grin at him that way, shrugging his shoulders while pointing a weapon at him and shortly after, the Wraith found himself at Sheppard's complete mercy.

He had trusted him enough to follow him to the Ancient's city alone and and unarmed, and the human rewarded him by trapping him behind metal bars and a power shield in a prison cell, chained and humiliated as Sheppard even decided to drag him to his own home planet millions of light years away in another galaxy.

The human forced him to work together with a creepy and annoying scientist to save a young human female he didn't know at all and who happened to be this unnerving genius' sister, and the Wraith asked himself if he had been mistaken to trust Sheppard and rely on their bond. But he did as he was told, knowing that he had no other choice than to obey and hope that Sheppard wouldn't betray that little faith he still had in him.

No one was more astonished than the Wraith himself that Sheppard truly did not betray his faith and saved his life as he broke down from his burning hunger, luring another man into sacrificing himself for the scientist's sister's sake. When he looked in those wonderful hazel eyes that held him under their spell so easily after the feeding, his only wish was to ease the human's conscience and his self-hate and overwhelming guilt but he knew that nothing he could say would make the colonel feel any better and so he kept his mouth shut and didn't say anything.

Sometimes, speech is silver but silence is golden.

**

They met several times after their return to Pegasus again, the Wraith coming back to the human like a puppet on a string, drawn in by his personality and charisma and unable to resist him.

They fought and argued, yelled and accused, they hid their true intentions from each other and tried to use the other one to their own advantage, but to their big surprise, their maybe unwanted but nonetheless strong bond never broke.

During their various encounters, Sheppard never grew tired of threatening him to kill him and tell him how much he hated him, but his eyes also told the ancient warrior why Sheppard behaved this way - why he actually was so afraid of letting the space-vampire come near him and these unspoken but so important reasons were what kept the Wraith coming back again and again.

They destroyed the cloning facility together, the Replicants and their planet and they sacrificed several Hives. They killed countless of the Wraith's brethren and somewhere in between their battles and fights, Sheppard 'gifted' him with the weird human name Todd. The Wraith Commander normally would have considered this name and Sheppard's intention behind it as a serious and severe insult, but the crooked grin and the mischievous spark in the eyes he loved so much left him defenseless and willing to accept every name Sheppard cared to gift him with if only 'his' human smiled at him that way again.

**

The incident with the Attero device though almost did cut their deep bond and this time, Todd found it very hard to forgive Sheppard and get over this betrayal, but in the end, his emotions for him were stronger than his anger and his hurt feelings and he came back to him twice against better judgment, his longing to be near this human too strong to ignore it.

The first time actually should have proven to Sheppard how the Wraith felt about him, willing to give up his immortality and his ability to regenerate for the human's sake, but as things stood, Sheppard still wasn't ready to admit his own strong feelings for the Wraith out loud. Instead, he chose to deny them, trapping and threatening Todd again, only to let him go in the end, unable to fight against his own feelings and let him die, and if it hadn't been for what those hazel eyes told him, Todd most likely would never have come back again.

But patience, forgiveness and a great understanding for the oftentimes strange and illogical behavior of sentient, intelligent and vulnerable beings come with an age of more than ten thousand years no matter whether you want it to or not and so, Todd came back to Sheppard when his home world Earth was in danger, willing to give him one last chance.

**

Todd had given up counting how oftentimes he had handed himself over to John Sheppard and been completely at his mercy and he knew quite well that this time would be the last time. If the colonel betrayed his faith and his trust the Wraith still held in him, then this time, their bond would tear and he would die. But, if the human did not betray him, then no living being would ever be able to come between them in the future and Todd had decided that this little chance had been worth the try.

When he sat in his prison cell stripped of everything from his clothes down to his dignity, looking at the colonel questioningly and hiding the turmoil of his feelings behind the impassive mask he had mastered perfectly over the centuries, he could see the colonel's own turmoil and he almost felt pity with him, wishing he could ease the weight of responsibility pressing down on the human's so strong and yet so fragile shoulders.

But it was nothing less than his own life lying in the human's slim hands and Todd wasn't willing to show him the way out of this mess, not this time. He had sacrificed so much, had done everything for the human, even given away his own brethren and this last time, Sheppard had to prove to him that he was worth the Wraith's undying faith and trust he had held in him so many times. This time, the human had to prove that he had not been mistaken and seen things and feelings in his wonderful hazel-green eyes that hadn't been there, at all.

Todd had thought that they had come to a deeper understanding for each other over the years and now, Sheppard had to show him that he was willing to take the last step and finally admit to the Wraith and, most of all, to himself that there was this unique and special bond between them, too strong to break it and go separate ways, too deep let each other down.

Todd could see in John's eyes as he watched him with a patience he actually couldn't allow himself to have in the state he was in, starved, lonely and in acute danger to be taken away and misused for the IOA's cruel experiments that the human man who had literally gotten under his skin right at first sight finally realized all of what Todd had realized right from the beginning – namely that they were meant to be together.

The colonel looked at him and even though he didn't say any of the things Todd longed so badly to hear, Todd knew that his faith in the human colonel wasn't in vain, because no matter what this tempting mouth might yell and shout at him, his hazel-green eyes couldn't lie and they told Todd everything he needed to know. John Sheppard wouldn't fail him, not this time and never again in their joint future.

**

Years have passed since their first painful and yet so fateful encounter, years where they have gone together through the worst and the best. Years that threatened to break their bond like the horrible year with the happenings of the Attero Device and the Super-Hive and good years after their return to Pegasus which somehow became a nice routine.

Years that should have let Todd get used to John Sheppard's constant presence in his life, to their strong bond and their deep feelings for each other, but Todd finds himself amazed and touched by each of these things as if he experienced it for the first time again and again.

It still amazes him how much John Sheppard trusts him, although he knows that Todd could easily overpower him and feed on him every time he lets him come close to him. The hazel-eyed human is a tough soldier down to his bones and Todd is soldier himself enough to realize that John Sheppard allowing himself to sleep soundly and curled up in his arms is one of the biggest proofs of his trust Todd can get.

Even more, because Todd once told him after they had become mates that John's life-force is the most delicious life-force he has ever tasted. Not that Todd would ever think of harming the one being that means more to him than any other being in the world, but he still remembers how good it felt to feed on this remarkable human man with those wonderful haze-green eyes and he knows that John knows that. Therefore, having John sleeping peacefully in his arms is something Todd will never get used to, that much is clear.

Todd also will never get used to the way John Sheppard looks at him when he gives himself to the Wraith completely and unquestioningly. They are mates for years by now and have gone through the deepest shit one can only imagine but, they never actually talked about their feelings.

For Wraith, it isn't necessary to use spoken words to let the other one know how they feel, for Wraith, all they need is their deep telepathic bond and Todd finds this way much more effective to share his feelings with the ones he cares about.

For Wraith, those famous three little words _'I love you'_ have not the same important meaning as they have for humans. Tongues and words can lie and Todd has met a lot of humans during the centuries who used these words on purpose to deceive someone else.

It somehow amuses Todd that John has only lied to him when he told him that he doesn't care about him and that he'd rather kill him than save him. John isn't good at talking about feelings and he avoids talking about emotions like cats avoid cold water. Todd is pretty sure that his human mate will never use these three words and tell him: _'I love you,'_ but that's fine with him because John also will never say them to deceive him this way, either.

The other thing about his human mate is that he is human and doesn't know telepathy, at least not in a good way. He has experienced other entities oppressing his mind and he has experienced Wraith Queens using their mental abilities to force him on his knees, and John told Todd quite frankly that he wants him to stay out of his head, at least under normal circumstances and without one or both of them being in lethal danger.

Todd accepted John's wish with a heavy heart, but the human colonel means too much to him to hurt him like this. He has to rely on other things to know what Sheppard thinks or feels and over the years, he has learned to read his hazel-green eyes like an open book or mind - to speak in Wraith terms. John's mouth might be able to lie to him, his eyes are not able to lie to him. They always tell his Wraith mate the truth. John's eyes are the gate to his soul and Todd relied on the emotions he could see there from the day on they first met.

The Wraith only has to look his mate in his wonderful eyes and he knows instantly what John feels, especially when it comes to the feelings for him.

When they are together like they are now and John gives himself unquestioningly to him, Todd can see the love and care his human feels for him and he is amazed and grateful that John tells him how much he cares for him the only way he actually can do it – with his so expressive and wonderful eyes. Todd always simply looks back at him and lets John see his own deep emotions for him, shows him his love and care the only way John can really deal with.

They have accepted their differences and what they truly are a long time ago – a human and a Wraith who chose to live their lives together and bring peace and hope to an entire galaxy with their own special relationship.

Over the years, they have come to an understanding that goes deeper than any other bond Todd has ever shared with his own kind and Todd trusts his human mate with his heart and his life. Their first encounter has formed a bond between them that is too strong to be ever broken and their love for each other is so deep that words or thoughts to prove this love are no longer needed.

Sometimes, eyes say more than words could ever do, especially when those eyes are of a wonderful hazel-green color and belong to the unique and remarkable human colonel John Sheppard, his beloved mate.


End file.
